Nicola Barker - Darkmans

‘Ah, yes. I remember now. I dumped you, but it was completely your fault…’

‘What can I say?’ Kane tried his best to shrug it off. ‘I simply wasn’t man enough.’

‘That’s true. You were weak.’

‘Not weak, exactly,’ he fought back, ‘I just wanted to enjoy my vices — to kick back, hang loose. But you have this strange need, this compulsion , to turn everything into a test or a challenge or a question of fucking honour . It was exhausting. I was twenty-two. I just wanted to have fun.’

‘Fun,’ she echoed, dully, ‘ fun .’

‘You’re one of life’s big adventurers , Win…’

He wasn’t sure if he was being entirely sincere.

‘Yup. Got it in one,’ she said.

‘There you go,’ he said, lamely.

‘Christ, you were too, damn cold ,’ she said, harshly, ‘and you’re still cold, you bastard.’

‘So you got educated, you got married, you developed a passion for Madeira cake…’ he did his best to try and railroad her.

‘I always asked Dad about you,’ she said, sullenly, ‘without fail. Every time we spoke.’

‘Did you really?’

He was surprised by this.

‘Yeah. Always.’

‘And what did he tell you?’

‘He said you’d put on a bit of weight. That you seemed bored, perhaps a little depressed…’

‘ Depressed? ’

Kane was taken aback, but he did his best to mask it. ‘ Aw , I never knew Tony cared so much,’ he said.

Silence

‘Anyhow, I got divorced.’

‘I see.’

‘There are some things…I dunno. Certain cultural identifiers …

No, signifiers …’

‘So that poor Haitian just couldn’t cut the mustard?’

‘Nope. He never “got” The Who. Didn’t like EastEnders . And on the mustard tip, it was French every time, definitely not Colmans…’

‘So the thing with Beede…’ Kane butted in.

‘And what I gleaned from my enquiries,’ she continued, cutting and pasting her conversation, effortlessly, ‘is that you’ve grown unashamedly pedestrian in your old age.’

‘What?’ Kane scowled–

Pedestrian?!

‘Pedestrian,’ she repeated.

‘Just like my father, you mean?’

He battled to swallow down his fury.

‘Good God , no,’ Winifred exclaimed, ‘not like Beede at all. The way I see it, we were completely wrong about Beede. Beede’s great value. He’s a maverick — a total hotspur. In fact I’ve become quite enamoured by Beede of late,’ she half-joked. ‘He’s definitely an acquired taste.’

Kane rolled his eyes underneath his fringe.

‘Stop rolling your eyes,’ she said, ‘underneath your fringe.’

He stiffened.

‘You know,’ she continued, her voice sweetening up, ‘the more I actually stop and think about it…’

His eyes tightened. An alarm bell started to chime. He remembered her using that phrase in the past: ‘The more I actually stop and think about it…’

Winifred stopping and actually thinking was never entirely a good thing. Winifred stopping and thinking often precipitated a sudden, wild leap into…into…

Where , exactly?

The wilderness?

The darkness?

The frying-pan?

The shit ?

‘Perhaps we should let this one go,’ he said, warily. ‘I am drunk. Vodka. You were right. And I’m feeling a little… uh …’

‘But just when things were getting interesting ,’ she purred.

‘I’ve gotta go,’ he said, ‘I need a pee. Someone’s just…someone’s banging on the door. Can you hear that?’

He held up the phone. There was banging.

‘Okay,’ she conceded.

‘I loved the book, by the way.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It was great. Well done. You did good, Win.’

‘I did good ,’ she echoed, mockingly, as he mumbled his hasty farewells.

They met on Kingsnorth Road, just along from the Post Office. It was shortly after ten. Beede was perched astride his Douglas, adjacent to the phone booth, his jaw set — and his arms firmly folded — against the cold east wind. He’d been waiting for approximately fifteen minutes.

Dory unwound the window of his Rover saloon as he drew up alongside him. ‘You really should get a mobile,’ he barked, ‘that whole, “I’m in a phone-booth but I’ve only got twenty pence” routine could certainly grow a little thin…’

‘How’re your timings?’ Beede asked (ignoring Dory’s carping), hopping off his bike and leaning down towards him, his breath finely condensing. ‘D’you want to head off somewhere?’

‘I’ve only got ten minutes,’ Dory said, glancing irritably towards the clock on his dash. ‘Work’s crazy right now.’

‘That’s plenty,’ Beede shrugged, ‘I only wanted to check up…’ he faltered, ‘I mean catch up…’

He turned, masking his slight embarrassment by pretending to make doubly sure that his bike was firmly positioned on its stand.

Dory didn’t seem to register Beede’s linguistic glitch. He merely nodded, abruptly, wound his window back up again, flipped on his indicator, pulled slowly forward and parked. Once the vehicle was stationary, Beede walked around to the passenger side, opened the door and clambered in.

‘I’ll switch the heating to max,’ Dory muttered, leaning forward. ‘You must be freezing.’

‘It’s certainly a little… uh …’ Beede slammed the door shut and removed his gloves, ‘ nippy .’

Dory adjusted the heating and then turned off his lights to preserve the battery. They sat quietly together for a few moments in the gentle gloom.

‘I actually took the liberty,’ Dory suddenly reached down into his side-pocket and lifted out a large, sealed carton, ‘of getting you a coffee. A latte .’

‘Thanks,’ Beede carefully took it from him (his voice a little surprised, his fingers still leaden), ‘that’s much appreciated.’

Dory shrugged. ‘I know how much you loathe these disposable things, but I was getting one for myself…’

‘No,’ Beede insisted, slowly easing off the carton’s lid and then appreciatively inhaling the coffee’s milky aroma, ‘this is great. Just what the doctor ordered. My circulation’s gone haywire. It’s pretty damn cold out there.’

As he inhaled, the steam from the carton promptly condensed on to the lenses of his glasses.

‘No sugar,’ Dory said.

‘Spot on.’

Dory reached down and withdrew a second cup. ‘I’m still on my herbal tea regime,’ he said, ‘you know, trying to cut down on my caffeine intake…’

‘I admire your self-control,’ Beede peered at him, amiably, through the blur. ‘In truth, I should probably be doing the same…’

He took a quick sip of his coffee. It was extraordinarily hot and extremely sweet. There were — at the very least — four sachets of sugar in it. On swallowing, his brows automatically arched and his glasses — correspondingly — shifted down his nose a way.

‘Well that’s…’ he swallowed for a second time to try and flush some of the excess sweetness from his tongue, ‘that’s definitely hitting the spot.’

Dory nodded, apparently satisfied.

‘So how’d it all pan out?’ Beede wondered (maintaining a consistent — almost unerring —brightness of tone). ‘With the police, I mean?’

Dory opened his mouth to answer, but before he could actually speak Beede entered a hurried plea on his own behalf. ‘I’ve been ridiculously over-worked myself — flat-out in the laundry — or I would’ve rung sooner, obviously…’